In general, such devices are used to bridge building joints between two building components, in particular between two bridge parts such as for example a bridge-head or abutment, respectively, and a bridge bearing or bridge girder, respectively, or adjoining bridge girders such that vehicles and living beings from one member can safely reach the other member. The building joints also referred to as movement joints or expansion joints are for compensating motions of the building components relative to each other.
Bridging devices are known from the prior art in various embodiments. One customary form of a bridging device is that known as center girder construction or lamellar construction. Here, the bridging device has at least one center girder that is fixedly or slidably arranged on at least one cross member that is rotatably and/or displaceably supported on the adjoining building components.
In order to obtain uniform distances between individual center girders to each other and optionally to the edge girders and to prevent wandering of the center girders, so-called control devices are employed. For example, such control devices are formed by elastic chains, scissors or also by means of so-called pivoting cross members.
To take account of the motion of the building components in conventional cross members there are often arranged receiving areas on the building into which the cross members can partially be inserted. These receiving areas are also referred to as cross member boxes. The shape of these receiving areas depends on the expected motion and accordingly can be very large.
According to the structural circumstances the provision of cross member boxes may be very difficult up to virtually impossible. For example, with steel bridges the carriageway slab generally ends with an end cross girder that must not be broken through. If such a bridge not even in planning is designed such that sufficient space for the cross member box is provided sometimes retrofitting a cross member box is virtually impossible. So, especially in modernization the particularly advantageous bridging devices in center girder or lamellar construction cannot be employed at all.